


f for fish, not fu...

by tearfultantrums



Category: To All the Boys I've Loved Before Series - Jenny Han, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Betrayal, Courtship, Drowning, Experimentation, F/M, Family Issues, Interspecies Romance, Jealousy, Marine Biology Fam, Mer!Peter, Near Death Experiences, Peter Being a Baby per usual, Possessive Behavior, Protectiveness, Romance, Stranded, Swimming, lj and margot do not have a good relationship, margot is... a mess in this, me: i love peter k! also me: i love mermaids! my brain: hey... you know what??, this is crack but like... i'm taking it seriously because i love my mer aus so much
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-24
Packaged: 2020-09-25 04:01:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20370355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tearfultantrums/pseuds/tearfultantrums
Summary: mutalism|defined as a type of symbiotic relationship that is beneficial for both of the two different species involved in the associationUnder a paid internship for her father - marine biologist Dr. Covey - Lara Jean impulsively sets out unsupervised to do a bit of field work in order to both impress him and prove her elder sister wrong about her. Her hopes are to find something that will help her stand out, perhaps something interesting in the realm of coral-seaweed interactions or a fish with a rarely-seen mutation. In her pursuit, she simultaneously discovers more than she had ever expected to find and exactly what she's been looking for.Rated M just in case.





	f for fish, not fu...

**Author's Note:**

> i wish i had decided to do this in may, so i'd have the cover of mermay to excuse this. >:( i'm fully aware that this is Strange™, and i'm fairly certain that this fandom has never shown much interest in too many AUs other than, say, college or post-grad life. but i love my creature!AUs, i'm hyperfixating on these two again, and the notion of mer!peter - my singing baby boy - would NOT leave my head, so... here we are. if anyone is coming along for the ride with me, you have my love. :) and if not, well... then i'll at least still have something for me.
> 
> lara jean is 20, for future reference.
> 
> warning: this chapter is !bad! because i have a horrid habit of overloading everything i find boring into first chapters so i can get to all the things i enjoy going forward. :) :) and... there ain't a lot of dialogue, which i do bad without. but next chapter will be getting more into the intended meat of things, promise!

In many ways, Lara Jean knew she was lucky.

From what her friends told her, coming by a summer job was hard. Making it one that was paired with good pay and accommodated the need to study when need be or have any sort of social life? Nearly impossible. Over Skype she had learned that her since-birth neighbor and friend, one Josh Sanderson, was doing some sort of mechanic work on top of taking shifts at a local comic book shop. Another childhood bestie, Chris, was stuck working the same Applebees' gig she had snagged during their senior year of high school - information she had received over text. There was also Lucas, the only friend she had made _in_ high school. When out of school, he served his time as a theater camp mentor, leaving him with what was probably the best situation out of the other two.

Then there was her. Lara Jean Song-Covey. Daughter of Daniel Covey. Dr. Daniel Covey. The administrative head of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. VIMS, as her family called it. Because really, they were a VIMS family period. The leader of their little clan, her father put years towards earning his PhD in Marine Sciences, and that interest had trickled (or barreled, really) down to his firstborn and her older sister - Margot. Margot had taken to the biological aspects of the study like, well, _a fish to water_. It hadn't taken long for her to become something of a right hand to their dad, both at home and in "the field." Frankly, Lara Jean thought the whole situation encouraged her sister to be an even bigger pain than she no doubt was inherently. She could never deny that her sister intelligent, she just wished Margot would be content to exercise that in a way that didn't come at the expense of her own intellect. Wished that she wasn't left living under a constant shadow.

Although her own interest in the subject stemmed more from a place that Margot would label juvenile (_"there's so much more merit to zooplankton ecology than there is to you finding whales cute, Lara Jean"_) she had also taken a liking to the marine-centric world from a young age. So, she had - perhaps inevitably - followed in the footsteps of her predecessors. In the present, it had earned her a paid internship at the Institute while she was out of school, a way to do more with what she was studying _and_ get paid. Was there a dash of nepotism involved in how she got the position? Perhaps. But it was no different than how Margot got her job there, even if she would deny it.

Margot wasn't the only sister she would potentially be sharing the workplace with someday, either. There was also Katherine - better known as Kitty - the youngest of the Song sister trio. She was too young to really have any solidified career goals just yet, but she had expressed some interest in their dinner time conversations, ones that always eventually circled around to marine this, marine that.

Either way, Kitty would be of no concern in the Circle of Work for at least another ten years. Her real concern (_enemy_) was, and always had been, Margot. The inception of the rivalry had been at birth. It had started off as toys. Margot always had the better ones, whether because she was better at saving her allowance or just took better care of her belongs. Then it was piano. For awhile, both of them had practiced and Margot had, per usual, swiftly surpassed her. Next it was family, which may have stung the most. Cousins, uncles, and aunts alike all preferred Margot. Then came grades, boyfriends (of which Lara Jean still stagnated at a pitiful zero), then colleges. No matter what they did, Margot always came out one step ahead.

Now, it would have been one thing if Margot was humble with her success. Any resentment that would have bred on Lara Jean's part would have had to have been the silent, guilt-tinged kind - because she needed to be happy for her sister, yes? But no. All that success had made Margot a figure of great condescension. On top of being the pseudo-boss at home ever since the passing of their mother, she amped up the patronizing behavior when they were at the Institute. Everything was, _"Lara Jean, not like that. Lara Jean, stop, just let me do it. Lara Jean, weren't you listening? God, Lara Jean, don't you think Daddy has enough on his plate without you messing everything up?"_ There was no end to it.

On a typical day she forced herself to grin and bear it. What else could she do? Margot wasn't just some pesky coworker, she was her sister. There was no getting rid of that, and usually with a couple Tylenol, she could handle it. But today? Today, her sister had gone too far. Today the humiliation had extended outside of their family circle and into the business world. Some of their dad's supervisors that functioned externally from VIMS were visiting, and he had chosen to keep his daughters close to introduce the two of them. What should have been a great opportunity for her to ask questions and learn was squandered by her eternal dark cloud of a sister. It had been as though it was Margot's life mission to irrevocably embarrass her. Everything she said got a side-eye or a passive-aggressive chuckle, the kind you gave a child who asked the silliest questions. She was made the errand lady, sent off more than once to fetch coffee, or this document or that binder.

It had taken a great deal of effort for her to not finish herself off on the mortification front and be brought to tears, but she'd restrained herself... up until they left. With a nasty parting look shot towards Margot, Lara Jean had left almost immediately after that fiasco had ended and gone out to one set of docks that were attached to the facility. It was the one place other than her bedroom that she truly felt she could relax, which made it a place she often needed when working in such close proximity to her sister. 

Before she had fully left the building, she had made a stop to haphazardly sweep a few things into a worn messenger bag: a pair of binoculars, a few pens and a notepad, a disposable camera, and one of the smaller - thus less costly - water samplers that were available. She hoped that would be enough for her purposes, since she didn't intend to _just_ relax. The day had proven that leaving Margot's shadow wouldn't happen unless she took calculated steps to retreat from it, and that would require work.

She had kept that in mind as she marched out of the building, determination marking her stride. She veered off to the side of the premises, moving all the closer to the sounds of the nearby estuary. There was a skiff on each side of the dock, each boat coming with an outboard motor to power it. Despite there being no discernible difference between the two, she glanced between each before settling on the one on the right side. Lugging her bag with her, she carefully dropped down into the boat, her hands shooting out to grip its edges when it rocked with the new weight.

There was no life-jacket in either boat, she had seen, despite her expectations for such. It had made her a touch more wary - going out onto the sea alone, no life-vest, and... quite the lacking knowledge on how to swim on her part. The amalgamation of those factors had left her tempted to reconsider, to instead do this when she was more prepared. But the ever-patronizing voice of her sister, _"better luck next time, Laura Jean"_, mocked her right out of that. 

She could do this. She was semi-sure of it. 

Shrugging her bag off to the boat floor, she set her attention on the motor, pulling it to roaring life. Once it had eased into a consistent putter, she sucked down a moderately calming breath before taking hold of the tiller and beginning to twist it, which accelerated the boat forward at a faster pace. The wind was vicious in its whipping of her face, paired with salty mist, and she was thankful for the small mercy of her hair being tied in its usual ponytail, keeping her from being blinded. 

The further out she got, the darker she noticed the clouds getting. "Seriously?" she murmured to herself, turning down the acceleration so that she could pat her pockets down for her phone. "Oh, _no_." Turning up empty, apparently checking the weather was out. God. _Margot_ would have checked before even stepping foot on the boat. Margot would have brought a life-vest, her phone, would be prepared to swim if need be. Yet again, she was faced with the painful reminder that she was _not_ Margot.

Although greater concern was now filling her, she soon tilted her chin up in a manner of resolve and restarted the acceleration. A little further out and she'd be in a better area to hopefully find something, anything, interesting. The waves weren't going easy on her, but she was sure she had seen worse. 

When she reached a suitable distance, she finally turned the propulsion off entirely. The boat itself kept rocking with the movements of the water, but it stopped moving forward, which made her comfortable enough to lean down and pull her bag into her lap. She fished out the camera first, trying to at least keep her hands steady to take a few base pictures of her surroundings.

It was when she finished that and switched to searching for the water sampler that she felt it. A drop of rain, which quickly turned into two, before all too quickly it was essentially pouring. 

Now, she wasn't someone who minded rain. But going as hard as it was, out in the middle of the ocean, with (what she could now tell were increasing) waves and harsh winds? Not as tolerable as a gentle drizzle on an otherwise sunny day.

"Just my luck," she groused, earning herself a mouthful of rain that she had to sputter out. After jumping when boasting thunder suddenly joined the party, she put the sampler down as fast as she could and shifted at the waist to get things moving again. Her luck was enough that the motor started with no protest, but turning around against the battering waves and wind alike was proving a bigger challenge. 

All the verve she had felt just earlier was fast dissipating, leaving Lara Jean with a snowballing longing for land, to have her feet on safe ground. The clouds above her had only thickened, and the already choppy waters only strengthened into ones that were outright vengeful. For her, there was absolutely no chance of staying still, and she'd already given up any hope of steering herself back to shore. Now her only concern was keeping upright, a notion that was seeming more and more unlikely the longer the ocean treated her vessel like no more than a bathtub boat and drenched her in the process. Her vision was practically diminished to nothing, but a brief glance around corroborated that there was nothing to be seen beyond the grey and angry swelling around her. If asked, she wouldn't have been afraid to admit she screamed when a bolt of lighting landed all too close to her, even if the sound was wholly drowned out.

As harrowing as it all was, the craft held out longer than could rightfully be expected of something so small, admirably climbing up and plunging back down each wave it was faced with. Until it met its match with a surge that even a larger vessel would have been overtaken by, and Lara Jean's already minimal vision was snuffed out. Every sense was suffused in _sea_, her stomach churning as she just barely registered that her body was being flung in ways it surely was never meant to. She had just enough sense to hold her breath and wildly reach out around her, not knowing what was up or down but doing her best to grab hold of _something_, anything. There was no calculation to her movements, no calm: only primitive desperation, violent thrashing.

But there was no saving grace to be found, and eventually the burn of her lungs won out. No matter her struggle, the need for air - even when all that was available was briny water - besting her was inevitable. With a hammering heart and mounting headache, she ceded to a desolate gulp, one that ushered in a painful, watery coolness where there was meant to be warmth.

With that action, utter darkness wasted no time seeping in at the edges of her vision, and she no longer had any fight left to resist its pull, and the last thing she was aware of was something cold and firm wrapping around her wrist before her consciousness flickered out entirely.

**Author's Note:**

> <strike>we love a generic "human drowns" mer/human meet.</strike>
> 
> i debated who i wanted to be the "mermaid", but at the end of the day, peter has the dumbest fish-bitch energy, whereas lj has smarty pants mini-biologist vibes.
> 
> comment if ur interested, friends. like peter, i respond well to positive reinforcement.


End file.
